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Table of Contents Acknowledgments 19 Part The Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Causal PrincipleI 21 Chapter 1 Introduction 22 1.1. The significance of the PSR 22 1.2 A restriction to contingent truths 31 1.3 Why accept the PSR? 36 1.4. What are we talking about? 41 Chapter 2 Reflections on some historical episodes 47 2.1. Parmenides 47 2.1.1. Truthmakers and the first argument for the ex nihilo nihil principle 47 2.1.2. The second argument 51 2.1.3. The third argument 54 2.2. Thomas Aquinas 55 2.3. Leibniz 59 2.4. Hume 63 2.4.1. The basic argument 63 2.4.2. The Annihilation Principle 64 2.4.3. Modal imagination 65 2.4.4. A possible diagnosis 69 2.5. Kant 70 Chapter 3 The CP and the PSR 77 3.1. Chains of causes 77 3.1.1. The Hume-Edwards-Campbell principle 77 3.1.2. The problem with the principle 79 3.1.3. Regress of explanations 80 3.1.4. The cannon-ball's causeless flight 81 3.1.5. Chains of causes 85 3.1.6. The Putnam-Meyer Cosmological Argument 90 3.1.6.a The argument 91 3.1.6.b Duration 95 3.1.7. Resisting the extension to chains 96 3.2. The ex nihilo nihil principle, the PSR and the CP 101 3.3. Resisting the extension to necessary truths 107 3.4. Resisting the restriction to positive states of affairs 109 3.5. A survey of some principles 112 Part II Objections to the PSR 122 Chapter 4 A modern version of the Hume objection 123 4.1. Toy models 123 4.2. A possibility principle 124 4.3. A stronger possibility principle 127 4.4. The empty world 128 4.5. Physicists are not merely logicians 129 Chapter 5 The anti-theological argument: "There are no necessary beings" 133 5.1. Cosmological Arguments 133 5.2. Necessary beings and absurdity 136 5.3. Rescher's alternatives to invoking the existence of a necessary being 137 5.3.1. Systematic explanation 138 5.3.2. Optimalism 140 5.4. Is the notion of a necessary being absurd? 145 5.5. Philosophy of mind objections 149 5.6. Lawmakers and laws 151 Chapter 6 Modal fatalism 155 6.1. Van Inwagen's argument 155 6.2. The existence of the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact 158 6.3. The nature of explanation 163 6.3.1. Could a necessary proposition explain a contingent one? 164 6.3.1.a The entailment principle 164 6.3.1.b Leibniz's response 166 6.3.1.c An ad hominem response 166 6.3.1.d Is an explanans always a proposition? 167 6.3.1.e Ceteris paribus laws 170 6.3.1.f Theism 177 6.3.1.g "Fred died because he died of being shot." 178 6.3.1.h Without the entailment principle 180 6.3.1.i A first look at libertarian free will 182 6.3.1.j A parallel 187 6.3.1.k What explains explanatory claims? 188 6.3.2. Could a contingent proposition explain itself? 191 6.3.2.a Paradigmatic self-explanatory propositions 191 6.3.2.b What is a self-explanatory proposition? 192 6.3.2.c The causal objection 193 6.3.2.d Implications for contingent self-explanatory propositions 194 Chapter 7 Free will 197 7.1. How to explain free actions? 197 7.1.1. The problem 197 7.1.2. A Jamesian account 198 7.1.3. A condition on a libertarianism to be plausible 199 7.1.4. Common ground 201 7.1.5. Libertarians should accept that free choices are explainable 202 7.1.6. Why did Jones freely and reasonlessly choose as he did? 204 7.1.7. The theistic case 205 7.2. Reasoned choices 206 7.2.1. The problem with the Jamesian account 206 7.2.2. A Jamesian response 207 7.2.3. Concrete choices 208 7.2.4. Another principle about explanation 209 7.2.5. Counterfactuals 212 7.3. Objections to libertarianism 214 7.3.1. Frankfurt 214 7.3.2. Hume 219 7.4. Sufficient reasons 220 7.4.1. The objection 220 7.4.2. The Principle of Disjunctive Causation 221 7.4.2.a The Principle 221 7.4.2.b First objection: Disputing the PDC's main claim 222 7.4.2.c Second objection: Denying indeterministic causation 223 7.4.2.d Objection three: Equivocation 224 7.5. An incredulous stare 227 7.6. Contrastive explanations? 228 7.6.1. "Rather than" sentences 228 7.6.2. Isn't all explanation contrastive? 236 7.6.3. No concession 237 7.7. The modesty of this account, and some alternatives 238 7.7.1. The modesty objection 238 7.7.2. Could we require high probabilities? 240 7.7.3. Morris' PSR 242 7.8. Conclusions 243 Chapter 8 Quantum mechanics 247 8.1. The problem of indeterminism 247 8.2. Rejecting indeterminism 248 8.2.1. Dispositions 249 8.2.2. The EPR problem 250 8.2.3. Locality 253 8.2.4. The conceptual possibility of deterministic quantum mechanics 256 8.3. Indeterminism and PSR 257 8.4. Particles coming into existence ex nihilo 259 Chapter 9 Turning Leibniz against the PSR 263 9.1. In favor of 54 264 9.2. A defense of the TPII 269 9.3. Against 54 271 9.4. Against 55 272 9.4.1. Reasonless-choice libertarianism 272 9.4.2. Haecceities and reasons 276 Chapter 10 What survives the criticisms of the PSR? 282 Part III Justifications of the PSR 285 Chapter 11 Self-evidence 286 11.1. A definition of self-evidence 287 11.2. The objection from smart people who disagree 288 11.3. But isn't the PSR easy to understand? 289 11.4. Two ways not to understand 292 11.4.1. Conceptual color-blindness 292 11.4.2. Talking ourselves out of understanding 294 11.5. More detail 296 11.6. Smart people who accept the PSR but not as self-evident 298 11.7. The impasse 300 11.8. Mathematical analogies 302 11.9. What self-evidence could be 308 11.10. Paradoxes 312 Chapter 12 Three Thomistic arguments 316 12.1. First Thomistic argument: the regress of existences 316 12.1.1. The regress of existences 316 12.1.2. The viciousness of the regress 318 12.1.3. How to stop the regress 320 12.1.4. Why do we need a cause at all? 322 12.1.5. The esse of Socrates is Socrates' being caused 324 12.1.6. Something could be the esse of more than one item 326 12.2. Second Thomistic argument: the interdependence of existence and essence 328 12.2.1. The non-universality of the esse-essentia distinction 328 12.2.2. The interdependence of essence and existence 331 12.2.3. Individual essences 332 12.2.4. Further differentiation of existences 334 12.2.5. Alternatives and objections 335 12.2.6. Essences ex nihilo 338 12.2.7. Non-causal dependence 338 12.2.8. Conclusions of argument 343 12.3. Third Thomistic argument: substance-accident ontology 344 Chapter 13 Modal arguments 348 13.1. The strategy 348 13.2. Sullivan's argument for the CP 350 13.3. The Weak PSR 352 13.3.1. The argument 352 13.3.2. Does this beg the question? 354 13.3.3. An alternate, incompatible principle 354 13.3.4. Range of application of the W-PSR 357 13.4. Causality and counterfactuals 358 13.4.1. The effect would not have occurred without the cause 359 13.4.2. A precise argument 360 13.4.3. The possibility premise 364 13.4.4. The Brouwer analogue 365 13.4.4.a Lewis's semantics 365 13.4.4.b An apparent counterexample 369 13.4.4.c A modal counter-argument 370 13.4.5. Conclusions 371 Chapter 14 Is the universe reasonable? 373 Chapter 15 Explanation of negative states of affairs 377 15.1. The argument 377 15.2. The defectiveness objection 378 15.3. The nomic necessity objection 379 Chapter 16 The puzzle of the everyday applicability of the PSR 380 16.1. The argument 380 16.2. An abundance of objections 382 16.2.1. This is not explanatory 382 16.2.2. The PSR is irrefutable 382 16.2.3. This inference is not predictive 385 16.2.4. The PSR is metaphysically necessary whereas inference to best explanation involves only nomic necessities 386 16.2.5. The PSR inferred is too broad 388 16.2.6. The PSR inferred should have merely nomic necessity 390 16.3. Laws of nature 392 16.3.1. Humeanism 392 16.3.2. Anti-Humeanism 393 16.3.3. Natural necessity 397 16.4. Laws of nature and the CP 399 16.4.1. Why are there no everyday violations? 399 16.4.2. Ceteris paribus laws and the CP 403 16.4.3. Essence and existence 405 16.4.4. The probability of violations of the PSR 406 16.4.5. Would a "deity" help? 409 16.4.6. Causelessly ceasing to be 410 16.4.7. Induction 412 Chapter 17 Inference to the best or only explanation 419 17.1. Can inference to best or only explanation be rational without the PSR? 419 17.2. Preference for explanatory theories 421 17.3. The Sherlock Holmes principle 424 17.4. Alternatives to the PSR that "do the job" 426 17.4.1. Restricted PSRs 426 17.4.1.a Restriction to scientific cases 426 17.4.1.b Detailed explanation 432 17.4.2. Probabilistic PSR 434 17.4.2.a Bayesian approaches 434 17.4.2.b An objective Bayesianism 435 Chapter 18 Inductive scepticism 441 Chapter 19 The nature of possibility 446 19.1. Alethic modality 446 19.2. A formalist account 449 19.3. Lewis's theory 451 19.3.1. Lewis's solution 451 19.3.2. Inductive paradox 455 19.3.3. Identity versus counterpart theory 460 19.4. Platonism: the main extant realist alternative to Lewis 465 19.5. An Aristotelian alternative 470 19.5.1. The account and some advantages 470 19.5.2. An account of S5 471 19.5.3. Global possibilities and worlds 474 Chapter 20 Conclusions 480 Bibliography 482 Index 496
Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication:
Sufficient reason.